Today’s literary news includes the revelation (in The Guardian via the Globe & Mail) that LM Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables, committed suicide. Montgomery died in 1942, but the cause of death was given out as heart failure because in those days suicide, and even suffering from depression, were regarded as shameful. Montgomery’s granddaughter, Kate Macdonald Butler, made the revelation as part of the publicity surrounding the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables. Butler wrote:

I have come to feel very strongly that the stigma surrounding mental illness will be forever upon us as a society until we sweep away the misconception that depression happens to other people, not us – and most certainly not to our heroes and icons.
[…]
We realize now that secrecy is not the way to deal with the reality of depression and other mental-health issues.

That’s an attitude that I wholeheartedly support. It would be nice to say that we are beyond that now, but with the news coming so soon after the loss of Tom Disch and David Foster Wallce I suspect that we still have a long way to go.